America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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Building upon the ethos of experimentation of the previous decade, many artists in the 1970s shifted away from making objects and began to embrace performative storytelling and body-oriented actions. Video technology—which was still in its infancy at the start of the decade—provided a groundbreaking new tool for personal expression, often giving voice to the disenfranchisement of women and people of color. While some of these artists were drawn to video’s formal and technical properties, others were among the generation of feminist artists who recognized the medium’s radical potential to appropriate the power structures of mass media. Suzanne Lacy’s Learn Where the Meat Comes From, for example, begins with the artist in a tastefully outfitted kitchen in a gentle parody of instructional cooking shows, such as the one popularized by Julia Child—and devolves into an absurdist, biting commentary on domestic work and the objectification of the female body. Lacy’s behavior alternately mimics that of both predator and prey, and by the end of the video the division between human and animal has all but dissolved; the hostess sits down to a properly set table complete with wine and salad and then proceeds to devour the cooked roast like a snarling, ravenous beast.

Other works in this chapter take up related concerns. Artists such as Eleanor Antin, Lynda Benglis, Joan Jonas, Cindy Sherman, and Hannah Wilke use their cameras—whether video or still—to confront themselves, exploring the boundaries of subjectivity. Others, including the Los Angeles−based collective Asco, Ulysses Jenkins, Howardena Pindell, and Martha Rosler work, like Lacy, to draw attention to the ways media shapes our perception of identity and to the inherent gender and racial biases that often accompany those depictions.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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“I have been concerned with the creation of a formal imagery that is specifically female,” wrote Hannah Wilke in 1976, describing “a new language that fuses mind and body into erotic objects that are nameable and at the same time quite abstract.” Wilke—an innovative artist who worked in sculpture, photography, drawing, performance, installation, and other mediums—is perhaps best known for her S.O.S. Starification Object Series, from 1974. The photographs, taken by Les Wollam in Wilke’s studio, depict the artist topless in various guises, her face and torso adorned with pieces of chewing gum sculpted into labial forms.

With Wilke posed sensuously, looking at the camera over her shoulder, S.O.S. Starification Object Series (Curlers), one image from the series, could be mistaken for a women’s beauty advertisement; however, the seductive nature of the image is negated by the unseemly “stars” stuck to her forehead, cheeks, and chin. The title of the series refers to both the Morse code distress signal and to the starring role in which the artist places herself as the object of the camera’s focus. It is also a word play, a pun on scarification, referring to ancient tribal rituals and the complicated relationship between pain, disfiguration, and contemporary notions of female beauty and power. Wilke’s work gained attention amid the feminist movement of the 1970s, yet it also became the target of feminist disdain. Her highly erotic self-portraits were seen by some as reinforcing the very objectification of women that she set out to challenge. In response to the criticisms, Wilke created a poster featuring a photograph from the S.O.S.series framed by the text “Marxism and Art: Beware of Fascist Feminism,” which she hung throughout SoHo in New York on the opening night of a solo show of her work in 1977.

Excerpted from Whitney Museum of American Art: Handbook of the Collection (2015), p. 408. Published by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; distributed by Yale University Press.

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America Is Hard to See

Learn Where the Meat Comes From

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HANNAH WILKE (1940-1993), S.O.S. STARIFICATION OBJECT SERIES (CURLERS), 1974

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America Is Hard to See

Learn Where the Meat Comes From

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HANNAH WILKE (1940-1993), S.O.S. STARIFICATION OBJECT SERIES (CURLERS), 1974

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Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection